Mark Twain on the Anti-Smoking Police

Today’s Wall Street Journal reprinted a delightful five-paragraph excerpt from a 1893 essay by Mark Twain titled “The Moral Statistician.” It is worth a few minutes of attention because it illustrates how far we’ve traveled from the days when politically incorrect truths could be voiced without fear of condemnation and censorship by the mainstream media.

Twain berates those “moral statisticians” who “are always ciphering out how much a man’s health is injured, and how much his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in the course of ninety-two years’ indulgence in the fatal practice of smoking” and other enjoyable but unhealthy pursuits, including drinking coffee, playing billiards, and drinking wine. And yet, he adds, “you never try to find out how much solid comfort, relaxation, and enjoyment a man derives from smoking in the course of a lifetime (which is worth ten times the money he would save by letting it alone)….”

These are observations I’ve made for many years, including in my 2006 book Please Don’t Poop in My Salad (which is available for free on Heartland’s Web site). But voicing such opinions even in the years leading up to 2006 was an invitation to be denounced and defamed, and in the years since then the campaign to attack and demonize anyone opposing the nation’s war on tobacco has become even more fanatical.

So it was nice, and brave, of the folks at the Wall Street Journal to pull this essay out of the memory hole and share it with the newspaper’s 2.3 million readers. Too bad it won’t much affect the “ornery and unlovable” folks leading the anti-tobacco movement.

I don’t want any of your statistics; I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it.

I hate your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much a man’s health is injured, and how much his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in the course of ninety-two years’ indulgence in the fatal practice of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally; and in taking a glass of wine at dinner, etc. etc. And you are always figuring out how many women have been burned to death because of the dangerous fashion of wearing expansive hoops, etc. etc. You never see more than one side of the question.

You are blind to the fact that most old men in America smoke and drink coffee, although, according to your theory, they ought to have died young. . . . And you never try to find out how much solid comfort, relaxation, and enjoyment a man derives from smoking in the course of a lifetime (which is worth ten times the money he would save by letting it alone), nor the appalling aggregate of happiness lost in a lifetime by your kind of people from not smoking. Of course you can save money by denying yourself all those little vicious enjoyments for fifty years; but then what can you do with it? What use can you put it to? Money can’t save your infinitesimal soul. All the use that money can be put to is to purchase comfort and enjoyment in this life; therefore, as you are an enemy to comfort and enjoyment where is the use of accumulating cash?

It won’t do for you to say that you can use it to better purpose in furnishing a good table, and in charities, and in supporting tract societies, because you know yourself that you people who have no petty vices are never known to give away a cent, and that you stint yourselves so in the matter of food that you are always feeble and hungry. . . .

What is the use of your saving money that is so utterly worthless to you? In a word, why don’t you go off somewhere and die, and not be always trying to seduce people into becoming as ornery and unlovable as you are yourselves, by your villainous “moral statistics”?

Joseph Bast is president and CEO of The Heartland Institute. Bast is the coauthor of 12 books, including Rebuilding America's Schools (1990), Why We Spend Too Much on Health Care (1992), Eco-Sanity: A Common-Sense Guide to Environmentalism (1994), and Education & Capitalism (2003). His writing has appeared in Phi Delta Kappan, Economics of Education Review, Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, The Cato Journal, USA Today, and many of the country’s largest-circulation newspapers.

I read some liberal anti-smoking diatribe that claimed the tobacco plant had no more right to exist than a typhoid bacillus or polio virus, and should be similarly eradicated.

All this for a plant that early Colonists learned to cultivate from certain Indian tribes and so paid the bill for a free nation. No tobacco trade with Europe, no money necessary to support a colonial Militia and a newly formed American Government.

Liberals take the same approach to fossil fuels that distinguished modern civilization from the dark ages.

I’m curious why liberals don’t take the same approach to marijuana. I’m convinced that it has something to do with the curious effect of marijuana intoxication producing an inexplicable fondness for solar panels and “organic” agriculture

harryhammer

Your words:

“I’m curious why liberals don’t take the same approach to marijuana.”

Have you ever tried marijuana?

I’m assuming that you haven’t.

So, once again you’re like a virgin giving sex advice.

One of the many reasons that liberals, and plenty of conservatives, don’t take the same approach to marijuana as they do tobacco is because the Journal of the American Medical Association studied the subject for 20 years and showed that cannabis doesn’t do the kind of damage that tobacco does.

Analysis of over 5,000 smokers showed that cannabis did not appear to harm lung function, although cigarettes did.

Incidentally, the Cannabis plant has a long history of use as medicine, with historical evidence dating back to 2737 BCE.

“I will take my rest and I will consider in my dwelling place like a clear heat upon herbs. For afore harvest, when the bud is perfect and the sour grape is ripening in the flower, he shall cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks and take away and cut down the branches.”

(Isaiah 18:4-5)

Brian G Valentine

You agin, Harry?

No I have never had marijuana, my father told me that stuff was for hop heads and losers, the kind of people who make nothing of their life. High on marijuana, a person can’t even be an effective gambler (now there’s an occupation for you).

I smoke cigars and a pipe, I don’t drink alcohol at all, I am 61 years of age, I am a throwback from the 1950’s – because industrial progress was effective.

I don’t think Isiah was glorifying hop heads, by the way

Brian G Valentine

Well we’re both people, we’re both Christians apparently, and separated by political color.

And that can make a big difference! There have been fist fights in the middle of the floor of many legislatures

: )

harryhammer

Yes, I am a Christian.

But, I don’t belong to any particular denomination.

I’m kind of like Christopher Langan when it comes to Christianity.

He says he, “can’t afford to let his logical approach to theology be prejudiced by religious dogma.”

Langan believes that there is a level on which science and religious metaphor are mutually compatible.

So do I.

Langan explains on his website that he believes:

“Since Biblical accounts of the genesis of our world and species are true but metaphorical, our task is to correctly decipher the metaphor in light of scientific evidence also given to us by God”.

FundamentalClue

It brings to mind that Mr.Twain had a fundamental respect and understanding for the sovereignty of the individual human being, which sadly, has been stripped from the minds of the masses. What right indeed does any man, group, agency or government have, to dictate the personal effects on one’s own volition to a preferred lifestyle? I believe America’s founding fathers would agree with Mr.Twain in this regard.
Is it legitimate? Is it intrusive? To what extent is it ethical to extend authority over an individuals sovereignty?
With respect to the voraciousness of the anti-smoking campaign, I’ll simply ask one question:
Is it more detrimental to a person’s health and to what extent, to breath second-hand smoke or carbon monoxide (the exhaust fumes of all gasoline powered vehicles and machines)? I’ll point out that a common method of suicide has been to lock oneself in a car running the exhaust into the cabin. Apparently it takes less than an hour to die.
This question above begs for another question:
If health is the major concern, where should our focus be concentrated? On something that could take a lifetime to kill someone who breaths first and second-hand inhilation? Or something that will kill you within the hour if inhaled directly?
And which is more prevalent in our society?